May 24, 2006

jakarta, indonesia reminds me so much of manila. it almost has the same feel. it has the same sad sorry old houses on one side of the street and beautiful new buildings on the other. i could swear that the roads too have the same number of potholes. replace the many mosques with churches and you can't tell the difference. the people look the same – brown skinned, always smiling faces. we speak differently but we share many common words. some have different meanings or are pronounced differently but most of the common words mean the same. it's as if the indonesians and filipinos have been separated at birth and allowed to grow individually that eventually they ended up looking the same and yet somehow different.